


track 2

by mockturtletale



Series: even if winter comes again [2]
Category: K-pop, 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Alcohol, Canon Compliant, Cuddling & Snuggling, Drunken Confessions, Drunkenness, First Kiss, First Love, Fluff, Found Family, Humor, Multi, Nesting, Polyamory, Trainee Period
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:07:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26864137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mockturtletale/pseuds/mockturtletale
Summary: “jesus fucking christ,” jimin says, low and stunned, and hoseok and seokjin must be those things too because they don’t even try to admonish him for his language. seokjin looks absolutely delighted about something and hoseok, when namjoon looks to him, is staring at namjoon’s hand. which is in the pocket of yoongi’s sweatpants. huh.
Relationships: Everyone/Everyone, Jeon Jungkook/Jung Hoseok | J-Hope, Jeon Jungkook/Kim Namjoon | RM, Jeon Jungkook/Kim Seokjin | Jin, Jeon Jungkook/Kim Taehyung | V, Jung Hoseok | J-Hope/Kim Namjoon | RM, Jung Hoseok | J-Hope/Min Yoongi | Suga, Kim Namjoon | RM/Everyone, Kim Namjoon | RM/Kim Seokjin | Jin, Kim Namjoon | RM/Kim Taehyung | V, Kim Namjoon | RM/Min Yoongi | Suga, Kim Namjoon | RM/Park Jimin, Kim Taehyung | V/Park Jimin, Min Yoongi | Suga/Park Jimin, OT7 - Relationship
Series: even if winter comes again [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1905997
Comments: 77
Kudos: 444





	track 2

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yeongwonhanrain (pudgypanda)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pudgypanda/gifts).



> so OBVIOUSLY this fic series is not going to plan so far!!!!!!!!!!! i got covid for the second time right after i posted the first part and then just as i'd started to recover from that i ended up in hospital with kidney stones so needless to say i have not had a lot of time to write! i'm trying to get back to it but it's slow going and i'm both sorry for that and myself very frustrated about it. 
> 
> this fic was a nice way to ease back into it tho! i took cypher p iii and gave it the softest, most sappy backstory ever. this fic is literally just ... namjoon being in love and being loved. throw in some peach soju and a blanket pile and that's it, that's the whole story. 
> 
> uh, ENJOY?? 
> 
> thanks to kh for being my brand manager / graphic designer / sister, thanks to nh and na for beta services so freely and lovingly rendered. this one is dedicated to my dear mono because i'm pretty often on my ot7 bullshit but i don't think i'd be as unabashed about that as i've become lately if not for her support and encouragement. ♥ 
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/hwifighting) /// [fic twitter](https://twitter.com/mockturtletale)

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

it’s ironic, namjoon thinks, that the cyphers are the closest thing they do now to what he’d been good at before - what had gotten him here in the first place, actually - but writing for them is still somehow one of the hardest tasks he has to tackle, these days.

before, namjoon had only had to think about himself and his own potential embarrassment, minus the relative amount of fucks he’d had to give about what other people thought at that time / on that particular issue. 

now, if he has a dumb opinion and publicly admits to it, he’s embarrassing the seven of them. there will likely be articles written about it that ping back and forth across the internet until they inevitably and irrevocably find their way into even his parent’s limited online sphere. namjoon doesn’t just speak for himself anymore, and he can’t shield himself with a moniker or use the relative anonymity of the internet as a turtle shell. 

it’s a lot of pressure. 

everything they do these days is a lot of pressure, but this part kind of sucks especially, because writing lyrics was once an entirely different beast for namjoon, and he’d previously been pretty fond of this particular breed of it. 

writing for himself was nerve-wracking because it meant letting himself go to the very depths of his feelings and some of those wells he knew to be endless enough for him to potentially never surface from again. but that was made it exhilarating to share; to get up on stage in a tiny, packed club and show everyone exactly where he’d gone to and found a way to come back from; what he stood there in front of them now having _survived_. 

bts can’t afford him that same depth of personal honesty and namjoon hadn’t ever thought it could. this isn’t about him and it hasn’t been since he was introduced to yoongi properly, met him for the first time in person after near-obsessively following his every move online, down 4am soundcloud rabbit holes and across crookedly photocopied, creased show flyers; along the trail of shared sentiments and stunningly fierce desire his headphones plugged him into. namjoon’s lowkey hero worship hadn’t made it any easier for them to make the transition to a ‘them’ that was at the beginning of ‘something’, but namjoon had felt more than justified in giving himself to this thing completely - given what he’d already known of yoongi and thought about him, felt for him - before he’d had any real reason to feel anything for him at all. 

what drew him to this group was the exact same thing that’s plaguing him right now: it’s so much bigger than just him. 

after hours of hastily scrawled words that he inevitably crosses out and scribbles over, namjoon is frustrated enough that he tosses his notebook aside and pulls up a new window on his phone to look for writing advice. he hasn’t been this desperate in a while. but desperate is exactly what he is, and so when he arrives at one piece of advice that doesn’t seem either completely ludicrous or like a total waste of time, he pauses. 

“write drunk. edit sober.” - Peter De Vries 

namjoon tilts his head and drums the fingers of his free hand against the arm of his chair, considering. 

and then he stands up, grabs his hoodie and his wallet and bundles up for a trip to the convenience store on the corner. 

he heads out determined, but without much hope for success. this probably isn’t going to work. but the ‘probably’ sits provokingly between the folded neurons of his brain like the dog-eared page of a book, and even if the crease will always remain, even though unfolding the page to lie flat again might only ever be an empty cup held aloft over already spilled milk, namjoon’s got to try. 

nothing else is working, and this probably won’t either. 

but even if just to know himself that he did, namjoon has got to try.

•·················ıllııllıllııllıllı·················•

the soju doesn’t go down easy, but it does go down quick.

namjoon is determined. he’s a man with a plan. he’s a man near-possessed. he’s a man that’s twisting the cap off a second bottle, knowing from experience that if he finishes it he’ll just be making his voyage back to the dorms an unnecessarily extreme sort of sport, but if he just has a little more; just another shot or two, that seems like it might be enough to shake something loose in him. 

he feels like he’s on the cusp of some kind of progress, like he’s straining towards what’s just beyond the reach of his outstretched fingertips and there has to be a reason why so many famous authors and artists cite their greatest works as having been born under the influence, right? 

that many people can’t be wrong, namjoon thinks as he grimaces against a sharp swallow. 

that many masterpieces simply can’t be coincidence. 

the peach flavoring helps some, but not much. 

after his third shot from the second bottle, namjoon sits back in his computer chair, his focus drawn more to the wheel of it that’s sticking than it is to his computer or his notebook. but that’s okay. maybe he needs to give the soju time to work its magic. maybe it needs a minute to settle. namjoon certainly feels like he does. everything has taken on a distinctly swim-y tone for him and it’s funny, he thinks, that he’s supposed to be writing right now, but just looking at his fingers fanning out into faint multiples already feels like it’s taxing his brain beyond capacity. 

namjoon looks at the sudden and surprising multitudes of his fingers for a moment longer, and then he closes his eyes and he means to wait, he means to settle in and ready himself to be swept away by the great wave of creativity, but actually - he’s been waiting for something that’s already here, he realizes then. it’s right there, behind his eyelids, and it seems to shake its head at him, both fond and admonishing somehow. it’s been expecting him. 

“oh,” namjoon says, outloud and totally alone in this room when he opens his eyes to it, so he quickly shuts them again. “oh. hi, hello.” 

it laughs at him now, but that’s okay. namjoon is grinning as he gathers his things, haphazardly shoving notebooks and extra charge banks and his laptop and hopefully his phone into his satchel. 

he pauses to wonder if he’s forgotten anything, and when he blinks for too long, it chides him. 

“alright, i get it,” namjoon mumbles to himself, shutting off the lights and locking up as he goes because as usual he is the last one here. 

“i’m coming, i’m coming,” he assures it as he spills out into the cool night chill of the city street. 

and then he’s moving, and it’s slow going but he makes it work. 

he puts one foot in front of the other, more certain of his destination than he is confident in his own abilities to get him there, but he worries less and less and less with every step he takes. 

his feet lead him to where he needs to be, and that’s exactly where he finds himself, now. 

he’s home.

•·················ıllııllıllııllıllı·················•

it takes a second for him to remember how to unstick the handle of the door, because there’s a trick to it that he hasn’t had enough practice at to perfect. there’s a pile of empty boxes to navigate just inside the threshold and nothing about this place is familiar to namjoon, not yet.

he sees yoongi first. or yoongi sees him, maybe. 

namjoon hasn’t quite gotten his shoes off and the still alien door chime is ringing out faintly behind him and there yoongi is, poking his head out into the corridor from the bathroom. he’s got his hair held back out of his face with a fluffy kumamon hairband and there’s some kind of foam cleanser gathered at his hairline, water dripping down his neck. he starts to look at namjoon in surprise or maybe confusion, but this quickly becomes something much more like suspicion. namjoon knows this because of how much yoongi’s eyes narrow. he knows because he reads it clearly in the pinch of the left side of yoongi’s mouth. this is an expression he’s intimately familiar with. this is an expression namjoon is incredibly fond of, on a person he’d like to get intimately familiar with. 

“i -” namjoon starts, and he’s about to tell yoongi that he loves him more than he thinks is advisable for one person to love another, because that’s the only thing on his tongue and in his heart right then, but yoongi interrupts him before he can. 

“are you _drunk_?” he asks, and namjoon trips over his own feet at the note of plainly naked shock in yoongi’s voice. he’d be embarrassed about that, given that he’s standing still, if the tone of yoongi’s voice didn’t also draw jimin from the living room, seokjin from the bedroom and hoseok from the kitchen. 

the four of them are watching namjoon now, their heads all poked out into the hallway like socially distanced meerkats, and every single one of their gazes is scrutinizing. namjoon needs to do some damage control. and like, yesterday. 

“when we make it,” namjoon tells yoongi, clumsily toeing off his shoes and going to him on socked feet, “i’m going to buy you a lifesize kumamon doll. i’ll buy you the mascot costume, if you want.” 

yoongi is looking up at him now, because namjoon is right in front of him, and it’s stupid, namjoon thinks, that yoongi is so much shorter than him, because namjoon feels tiny, compared to him. he feels like yoongi is a giant that he’s constantly trying to scale a beanstalk to get to, only instead of running away from him when he gets there, namjoon just wants to climb into yoongi’s pocket. 

“jesus fucking christ,” jimin says, low and stunned, and hoseok and seokjin must be those things too because they don’t even try to admonish him for his language. seokjin looks absolutely delighted about something and hoseok, when namjoon looks to him, is staring at namjoon’s hand. which is in the pocket of yoongi’s sweatpants. huh. 

the thing is, this isn’t by any means the first time that namjoon has been drunk. 

but it is the first time he’s been drunk around the members. not that he is drunk, because he’s absolutely not. but whatever he is, he hasn’t been like this around them yet. those of them old enough to drink might have a couple shots at celebratory team dinners, but they’re too busy to drink socially and even when they have the time, they’re exhausted enough that it’d be a bad idea. it’s probably a bad idea now, but namjoon won’t know that for sure until he sees it through. 

“i’m not drunk,” he says to reassure them. and in his own defense. “i’m just … merry.” 

hoseok steps out into the hallway, finally appears in all of his glory, and drifts down the corridor to where yoongi and namjoon are still standing. 

“we thought you were at the studio, still. did you go out with your friends instead?” hoseok takes the strap of namjoon’s satchel and lifts it over namjoon’s head to shoulder it himself. he’s wearing a muscle tee and namjoon wonders if it was even called that before hoseok decided to start wearing them. namjoon certainly hadn’t known that’s what they were called. he never looked at anyone wearing one and thought ‘wow, muscles,’ but he does when hoseok is wearing it. he is, right now. “is that where you’ve been?” 

“no!” namjoon says, scandalized. he’s probably shouting, too, because yoongi and hoseok both wince. “i would never go out when i’m supposed to be working. i didn’t drink for me. i drank for you.” 

jimin has drifted downstream to them now, too. he’s wearing a very short pair of shorts and nothing else, which isn’t uncommon, but also isn’t at all helpful, if you ask namjoon. he doesn’t know quite what he would call it, he struggles to find exactly the right word, but ‘rude’ almost covers it, he thinks. it certainly covers it much better than those shorts are covering jimin. how can someone have thighs and arms and abs like that and the cutest bellybutton the world has ever seen? it’s unreasonable. it’s unfair, namjoon thinks. 

“i like how you look,” namjoon says, feeling genuinely dizzy for the first time tonight as he looks into jimin’s face, “you’re like … ripped.” he reaches out to touch the lovely stretches of muscle in jimin’s arm and he can’t help the noises of appreciation he makes. his head is spinning, but his heart is having a silent rave in his chest. it’s silent to everyone else at least, namjoon hopes, but it’s thundering to his ears; the thump of it, the too quick, too enthusiastic race of it blaring when he looks up and finds all four of them looking right at him. “and even when you’re not ripped, no matter how you look. i love it. i love -” 

“okay, we’ll get back to the why of this in a second,” seokjin says, somehow behind namjoon now and gently peeling his jacket down off his arms, reaching to hang it on a hook and then looking back at namjoon’s hoodie speculatively. 

namjoon reaches for the hem of it himself, and he’s gonna go for the hem of seokjin’s tshirt next, his plan is set and already in motion, but thwarted in an instant when hoseok and yoongi both reach for one of his hands and he has no choice whatsoever then but to let them take them, to offer up whatever he’s got that they might want. seokjin hugs him around his middle, and that feels abruptly like far too much. far too close to something that namjoon has for some reason put warning signs and police tape around. he can’t remember why, though. he can’t for the life of him think of a reason to keep any of them out, when where he wants them instead is very much _in_ \- as close to him as he can get them, as close to him as they will come, so he can make himself where they all want to stay. because he loves them. because he both needs and wants them very, very much. 

he tilts his head back onto seokjin’s shoulder and he must be heavier than he’d thought, because he feels seokjin falter behind him. 

“oh god. oh fuck. okay - let’s get you changed into something more comfortable first, hmm? and jimin, you should probably go make sure jungkook doesn’t -” 

“jungkook doesn’t what?” jungkook says, appearing in the doorway to the bedroom with his hair sticking up on one side, rubbing at his eyes with his fists. he must have been asleep. god, namjoon loves it when jungkook sleeps. the sight of him getting some rest is one of namjoon’s absolute favourite things to see. 

“i watch you sleep for hours sometimes,” namjoon says, and walking home in the cold night air must have hit him harder than he’d thought, because it almost looks like the color visibly drains from jungkook’s face. he looks at namjoon with even larger than normal eyes and holds onto the door frame like he’s the one that needs support staying upright. it astounds namjoon, how pretty he is. “it’s not right how sweet and kind and beautiful you are. you’re like the fibonacci sequence. numbers shouldn’t be able to account for your totally natural perfection.” 

“oh, great. wonderful. here we fuckin’ go,” seokjin says, seemingly to himself. he’s fussing again, pushing namjoon’s hair back out of his face and touching his cheeks with the backs of his knuckles like he’s checking him over for injuries. namjoon would lift a hand to press seokjin’s whole palm to his face, but both of his hands are in the pockets of yoongi’s sweatpants now, still entangled with yoongi’s and hoseok’s hands in turn, and it feels like a shame to do anything to change that. 

“is rapmon hyung _drunk_?” jungkook seems to teleport until he’s gently pushing his way in between namjoon and yoongi, not dislodging namjoon’s hands from yoongi’s pockets but reaching to take namjoon’s face in his own hands when seokjin shakes his head and lets his arms fall back down by his sides.

“m’not drunk. i’m working on something. i’m testing a hypothesis,” namjoon tries to protest, but they largely ignore him, which actually works out in his favor for once because he’s pretty sure he just put about four extra s’s in the word ‘hypothesis.’ 

“oh god. oh no,” jungkook is murmuring and namjoon can’t actually tell for a second which of their eyes are filling with tears. he closes his own eyes to check and what lives behind them rumbles at him in deep set and absolute satisfaction. this is good. this is so very good and right. he’s here. he’s right where he’s supposed to be. 

“he’s so cute,” jungkook is whispering now, and jimin and hoseok are both looking at him in alarm that’s much louder and clearer than the kind of alarm they’d looked at namjoon with, and namjoon finds this gratifying. he has no idea why any of this is a big deal, but he doesn’t think that whatever it is necessitates him being the center of attention. he doesn’t want to be in the spotlight right now. or ever, really. not if he can be shining it on one of them, instead, or underneath it with all of them. god, he loves them so much. he never wants to be anywhere that they aren’t. 

“i love this. i like all of you so very, veeeeeerrrrrry much.” 

both namjoon and jungkook are wet-eyed now and yoongi seems to be blinking a lot more than he normally does, too. 

“yeah, same, sure. absolutely,” seokjin says, stepping back in to break their beautiful little love fest up. he stands up straighter behind namjoon, his chest pressed close to namjoon’s back, and puts his arms around namjoon’s waist to gently tug namjoon’s hands out of yoongi’s pockets and then shake them free from yoongi and hoseok’s holds. both namjoon and yoongi pout. hoseok seems relatively unbothered, easily reaching for jimin’s hand instead. but then seokjin gently pushes jungkook to take a step back from namjoon and it’s all hands on deck as signified by the wailing alarm that is jungkook’s frown starting to wobble. “oh stop pouting, i’m not taking him away, i just think this situation warrants more than all of us standing here in the hallway fawning over him.” 

nobody disagrees with this sentiment, but every single one of them follows after seokjin like a line of ducklings when he slowly and carefully guides namjoon to the bedroom. 

“i’m tipsy, i’m not suddenly incapable of walking, hyung,” namjoon protests, but several voices shush him at once. one sounds kind of like his own. 

“you are drunk,” seokjin informs him, lifting namjoon’s arms up into the air so he can pull his hoodie off, “and we’re going to take care of you.” this second part is quiet, maybe not meant for namjoon to hear, but seokjin’s mouth is right next to his ear and no one else in the room is saying anything, so he hears it loud and clear. and promptly tears up again. 

“i’m not drunk. i barely had more than a bottle,” he tries to say, but it comes out garbled around his blubbering. he’s always been a weepy drink. that’s maybe been a factor in him never wanting to get seriously drunk around them. why didn’t he remember this? where is his self preservation gone? oh right, he’d shed that somewhere near the bottom of the first bottle. there’s only this now; drunken, naked, truth. the kind of honesty that sober namjoon is too scared to step into. 

“but why did you drink?” yoongi asks, once seokjin has namjoon changed into his house clothes and settled on jungkook’s bed, because that’s the only bed that isn’t a bunk. the sheets are still warm and namjoon’s still has his wits about him enough to not immediately turn over and push his face into them, but he does spread his palms out on either side of himself, soaking up the dying embers of jungkook’s body heat. maybe he makes eye contact with jungkook while he does. maybe jungkook whimpers. maybe namjoon does. namjoon wouldn’t know, so don’t ask him. generally he’s a big fan of questions; both asking and answering them, but his mouth isn’t exactly in co-operative cahoots with his brain right now. is there a written version of this exam he could take? he’s much better at those. 

“i was in the studio,” he says, backtracking to the last point of solid, tangible knowledge he finds when he gropes around in his thoughts. it’s like their laundry basket in there, which is to say that there isn’t actually a basket or anything else holding his thoughts together at all; everything is piled haphazardly on a chair that’s missing three of its five wheels and probably set to tip over at any moment now. all of namjoon feels … lopsided somehow, everything skewed and tilting, and it takes him a moment to realize that that’s because hoseok is standing next to the bed with his hand held out so namjoon can rest his cheek in it. how is hoseok’s hand so soft? how is everything about him so soft and smooth and sweet? 

“you were in the studio and ?” yoongi prompts, and namjoon almost startles at the sound of his voice. yoongi is sitting cross-legged on the floor next to the bed and it feels like it takes a solid week for namjoon’s eyes to traverse the great distance between hoseok, at standing height, and yoongi, so low to the ground. god, he’s so small. he’s never small when he’s talking or when he’s working or when he’s looking at namjoon like he knows everything there will ever be to know about him, but when he’s at home sometimes, when he steps out of his bigness, he seems to namjoon to become so very, terribly small. 

“writing,” namjoon blurts, and the word is wet. he’s crying again, but that’s okay. yoongi is just so little, is all, and namjoon wants to build him some kind of nest. wants to find a way to always keep him safe. yoongi frowns at him, an apprehensive kind of pout of his mouth, and namjoon feels a sob rise in his throat. “i was working. trying to. i was supposed to be working. but the words …” 

“wouldn’t come?” jimin offers, and namjoon pauses to think about that. jimin and jungkook are both sitting on the bed with him, one of them cross legged on either side of his legs. it’s a tight fit, but it’s not the first time the entire maknae line has crammed together on a single bed. they’re not especially small bodies, the four of them, but - 

“oh my god,” namjoon says, his tears taking on a different tack entirely and coming fast enough to cloud his vision now, “oh my god i lost taehyung.” 

namjoon knew this day would come. he’d known all along that if one of them was going to get away from him, it would be taehyung. yoongi and hoseok are sensible enough to stay where they’re supposed to be and jimin and seokjin always want to be where the action is, so none of them would wander off. namjoon would put one of those leashes that white people put on their kids on jungkook, if he thought he’d get away with it, but also he’s never needed to because every time he turns around jungkook is right beside or behind him. taehyung, though. taehyung is flighty. he’s easily distracted and he’s always been a social butterfly and namjoon has always known, in his heart of hearts, that taehyung belongs in the ‘high risk’ category of potential disasters waiting to befall them. he should have been more careful, he should have - 

“um, i’m right here, hyung,” a voice says, and then taehyung is right there, his head popping up over seokjin’s shoulder where he’s standing at the foot of the bed. his hair is wet and he doesn’t seem to be wearing a shirt, but namjoon spends a lot of time looking at all of them and imagining that they’re not wearing a shirt, so maybe - 

“no no, you didn’t mentally strip me, hyung. i just got out of the shower,” taehyung side steps seokjin and pushes both jimin and jungkook out of his way so he can crawl up the bed over namjoon, sitting astride his thighs in just a pair of boxers that namjoon is actually pretty sure are his. that’s super weird, because namjoon isn’t sure of anything else at all, right now, but his certainty that these are his boxers is absolute. they don’t look like this on him. “but that’s not important. what did i miss? what’s going on? tell me more about how you think about me without my shirt on, hyung.” 

taehyung is like … dazzling, in namjoon’s lap. his skin tone is so warm, a little deeper than most of the rest of theirs and honeyed, lovely. the way he fits in his own body makes namjoon think that awkwardness is something he must have invented himself, just for himself, because there’s never been a trace of it to be seen or found in kim taehyung. it’s not cockiness, not even quite confidence that taehyung carries himself with, but pure comfort, maybe. taehyung moves through the world like his body was tailor made to fit him, whereas namjoon’s body pretty often feels like something he borrowed from a hyung, from someone a little bigger or a little smaller than him on different days, in different ways, so that it never really seems to exactly _fit_. taehyung is a kind of certainty and surety that namjoon can’t even begin to understand, but he’s jealous of it anyway, he thinks. or maybe he’s just incredibly curious. mostly, he wants to know what it feels like. and he wants to learn about it by putting his hands on taehyung’s body and getting to know it on him, in him. he reaches out now, his own hands almost startling him, but that’s not important, what’s important is touching taehyung, what’s important is - 

“he’s _drunk_ ,” seokjin says, scathing, and then there’s another pair of hands coming into view, hooking under taehyung’s arm pits from behind and hauling him back down the bed out of namjoon’s lap. finding himself wanting to cry makes namjoon realize that he isn’t, anymore. “he’s drunk and we don’t even know how or why yet, so could you shelve trying to get into his pants until like, never, maybe?” 

taehyung is pouting now, and namjoon is too. 

“he started it, hyung,” taehyung says, petulant, even though seokjin is gently brushing his wet hair back out of his face. 

“he has also confessed his love for basically all of us already, so not to burst your bubble or whatever, but he’s drunk out of his mind.” 

“no!” namjoon yells, the sound bursting out of him without his permission or any warning. jungkook nearly falls off the bed onto the floor, but yoongi catches him and pushes him back up and then namjoon reaches out and tugs hard at jungkook’s shirt sleeve until he curls up next to him, lying down with him. so much better. everything is better when jungkook is this close. “i’m not drunk out of my mind. i’m drunk _into_ my mind. that’s what i’ve been trrrrryyyying to tell you.” 

why doesn’t seokjin get this? out of all of them, namjoon expects seokjin to be best at understanding him. yoongi and jimin are technically probably best at that, but yoongi thinks it’s overstepping and jimin second guesses himself so neither of them are comfortable with doing namjoon’s thinking for him, not yet at least. seokjin, though, has always been the most ‘take charge’ one of them, in all the ways that don’t actually involve taking charge, so he doesn’t mind cutting namjoon off to tell him he already knows where he’s going with a thought, or sometimes cutting to the chase and telling namjoon his own conclusion before he’s had the chance to reach it for himself. namjoon meanders, seokjin says, even when he’s thinking. 

so it annoys namjoon, that seokjin thinks that namjoon is telling them he loves them because he’s drunk. it annoys him because seokjin doesn’t get things wrong, so namjoon mustn’t be saying it right. he mustn’t be showing them what he means the way he means it. 

“i drank because i was thinking too much,” namjoon says, and both seokjin and yoongi give him the considering kind of look they tend to level at him when he’s going somewhere crazy with something but they’re willing to entertain him, still, so namjoon feels like this must be going better than his previous attempts to explain. jungkook has his head pillowed on namjoon’s chest and jimin and taehyung are trying to fuse into one entity to twine themselves around namjoon’s right leg, and namjoon has never been so comfortable in his life. “i couldn’t write because i couldn’t stop thinking and then when i drank, i found the answers. just like peter de vries sunbaenim said i would.” 

and that says all that needs to be said, if you ask namjoon. that’s all the pertinent information, laid right out. everything where it’s supposed to be. sense and reason and logic present and accounted for. 

so he doesn’t understand why everybody is looking at him like they’re still waiting for the punchline. 

namjoon reaches for hoseok’s hand and tries again, because everything makes more sense to him when he’s holding onto hoseok or touching him, so maybe that will work in the reverse too. 

“i got trashed to see if it would displace me far enough from my own insecurities to let me produce a masterpiece. or even just like … a piece. it didn’t have to be masterful. i just wanted to write something that wouldn’t embarrass you all.” 

yoongi’s face gets tight, at that. he shuts down whatever was about to bloom on his face in response to that right at the same time as hoseok’s hand locks around namjoon’s, and jungkook tugs namjoon closer to him so jimin and taehyung have to shift closer to stay pressed up against him. everybody is moving all at once and namjoon feels like a little seashell being buoyed across the sea bed by gentle undercurrents. it’s dope. 

“i can’t believe you still use words like ‘displace’ when you’re wasted, but lets circle back to that,” seokjin says, perching at the very end of the bed and lifting namjoon’s feet up onto his knees. “why would you think you’d embarrass us? haven’t we made it clear that we’re perfectly capable of doing that ourselves?” 

namjoon thinks about that. and sweet potato pizza. god, he’s starving. normally when he’s trying to write he forgets about eating, sometimes for a whole day even, but he’s so hungry right now. he’s craving something super filling, something full of carbs and loaded with cheese. he paws at his pocket for his phone, but yoongi beats him to it. 

“what do you need? hyung will do it for you,” yoongi says, and namjoon whimpers, a little. 

“please don’t say that to me when you’ve got your hand in my shorts,” he … well, he begs. he’s not proud of it, but it is what is is. 

yoongi puts his face in his hands, and namjoon nods, because yeah, that’s accurate. 

“hyung?” jungkook asks, like he’s trying to remind namjoon of something or bring him back to something, and oh. oh, yeah. 

“you embarrass yourselves, for sure,” he says, because they do. one of the more overlooked but still spectacularly sucky pitfalls of being an idol is just how many opportunities they get given to make fools of themselves. some days, some appearances, feel geared only towards that; set and scripted to humiliate them in ways that for some reason, a lot of people seem to find hilarious. 

“you never embarrass me, though. i’m never embarrassed by any of you. i’m only ever proud of you,” namjoon says, and then they’re all looking at him very softly, in ways that seem both careful but also completely naked, openly almost adoring, and namjoon’s eyes fill up again. “except for when i’m maybe halfway in love with you all, instead. but i’m proud of you then, too, actually. i’m always proud of you, that’s like … the sun. everything else orbits around that.” 

the silence that follows sets namjoon scrambling, gets him rifling through the pages of his brain to double check his science. the sun is the center of the universe, right? most of what he’s looking at up inside his own brain seems like it’s written in a different language, in hieroglyphics maybe, but his knowledge of the solar system feels like it goes beyond just words or notes or diagrams. kind of like the way he feels about them does. it’s not tangible, there’s no set formula for it, and normally that would make namjoon at least a little wary of it, but feeling the way he does about them and how it falls out - always differently, but still somehow the same, at the heart of it - has made him more accepting of things he can’t quite prove, not properly. loving them is like an execution that he can’t access the code for; he knows what it does and he knows that it works, but he doesn’t know the how and why of it. and that’s fine. that’s pretty fantastic, actually. 

he grins at them, kind of sleepy now and still starving, still craving something doughy and greasy, but it doesn’t seem as imperative to him to acquire it anymore. all of them are here, clustered around him, all of them touching him somehow, and he really doesn’t need anything else. 

“i got drunk to see if it would make me more productive,” he says, closing his eyes and laying back against the pillow, dipping his chin down towards his chest so he can hide his nose in the hair at the crown of jungkook’s head. he’d cuddle him properly, but he’s still holding hoseok’s hand and his other arm is around both jimin and taehyung’s shoulders, so he has to settle for letting jungkook cuddle him, instead. it’s so very nice, to be so surrounded by them. to feel no anxiety about their proximity or how much he craves it, how much it feels like something akin to basking, to him. 

“but it totally made me forget all about working. i was blocked because i didn’t want to fuck things up for all of you but once i started drinking all i wanted was to be here. to see you,” how is his head spinning when he’s lying down and has his eyes closed? “just wanted to be with you all.” 

“oh my god,” seokjin says, like he does when he watches jungkook eat sometimes, or when jimin sinks into the full splits like it’s nothing. he sounds stunned. “did he - is he -” 

“did our leader get shitfaced and then stumble home to kind of confess to all of us at once?” yoongi says, and namjoon has to screw his eyes shut as hard as he can, because it does things to him to hear his hyungs call him their leader. “yeah, that’s about the sum of it, hyung.” 

yoongi sounds mostly like himself, his voice only a tiny bit strained, so namjoon chances cracking one eye open to peek at them. they’re all staring at him. except for jungkook, who is trying to burrow face first into namjoon’s armpit. either namjoon is sweating like, a really worrying amount, or jungkook is crying. 

and as usual, as is right and normal, this makes namjoon cry. 

“why are you all being so weiiiiird,” he kind of wails, but quietly, at least. “i’m the one that’s drunk into my mind, why do you all look like you can’t remember if you left the oven on?” 

“ _fuck_ ,” hoseok says, and then he drops namjoon’s hand to duck quickly out of the room. he moves so fast he’s blurry. namjoon misses him already, but he uses his now free hand to reach out and pet at yoongi’s hair. yoongi, shockingly, actually lets him. being drunk is awesome. 

“this is a disaster,” seokjin says, which namjoon doesn’t understand. like … at all. everything’s great? he still has a lot of work to do, but that doesn’t seem even a little bit pressing right now. literally nothing does, outside of the press of their bodies to his, the halo of them around him that’s completed again when hoseok skids back to his side. 

“i want to live in a nest. just like this, all of us crammed together,” namjoon decides. “and i want sweet potato pizza.” 

he just wants to lie in a puppy pile with his boys and eat something fattening without worrying about it. that’s literally all he wants from this life, right now. 

again, the pause around him is pregnant. it’s like a physical thing, this strange kind of tension in the rest of them that namjoon doesn’t understand or like. he feels like all the strings and wires and chains have fallen away from him, so he hates that they’re all looking between him and seokjin like they’re on some kind of tight rope. he hates it. 

“i love you,” he says, sniffling again. “like, i’m in love with you. but also i love you all so much.” 

and with that, the tension pulls tight enough to finally snap. 

“you know what, fuck it,” seokjin says, carefully stripping namjoon’s socks off. his hands are trembling and it doesn’t seem like either of them know why exactly he’s taking namjoon’s socks off, but his eyes are kind of blazing. he stands up in a way that could only be described as ‘decisive.’ he looks like he should have a clipboard in his hand. or a headset on. or a podium to stand behind. 

“jimin, taehyung,” seokjin says, and both of their heads snap towards him so fast that namjoon gets dizzy just looking at them. “gather up everyone’s blankets. yoongi, you order food. hoseok, would you get my card, please? my wallet is on top of the fridge.” 

everybody starts moving at once, and namjoon doesn’t blame them. seokjin never gives orders. he certainly never asks them to do things he can do himself. he rarely even asks them to do things that he can do for them, instead. 

“jungkook?” seokjin says, and jungkook’s “yes, hyung?” is still muffled into namjoon’s arm pit. he doesn’t seem inclined to move unless someone tells him he has to, and namjoon’s pretty on board with that. “okay, you just … keep doing what you’re doing. i’ll call you when we need you, okay?” 

he makes to leave, but jungkook’s face finally emerging from mostly inside the sleeve of namjoon’s tshirt makes him pause. 

“sure, hyung, but what’s happening? what are we doing?” 

seokjin rolls his eyes at him. 

“you heard him, ‘guk. he loves us. and he wants pizza. and a nest.” 

something in seokjin’s eyes softens, when he looks at namjoon, and namjoon feels his face crumble at it, but he doesn’t start crying again. not yet, at least. 

“he told us what he wants, and it’s something that we can give him, so we’re going to. okay?” 

jungkook sort of sighs, and it’s a thick sound. something heaving somehow, low and wide - vast, with emotion. he pushes his arm all the way under namjoon’s back, between him and the sheets they’re lying on, until he can loop his arms all the way around namjoon’s chest and hold on tight. 

“okay, hyung,” jungkook says, dragging namjoon closer until he’s the one resting his head on jungkook’s chest, now. 

“okay,” seokjin says, strangely decisive again, and then he ducks out of the room, smiling at them both before he goes. 

it’s just namjoon and jungkook now, but that’s okay. 

jungkook smells good, and he’s clinging to namjoon like he’s drunk too, but in a different kind of way, maybe, and namjoon - head still swimming, his heart full and thumping - clings right back. 

•·················ıllııllıllııllıllı·················•

a flash of light and the obnoxious shutter click of someone taking a picture rouses namjoon. he frowns, but only burrows further into jungkook’s chest. he hadn’t been sleeping, not quite, but they’ve been lying here in warm, easy silence, just holding each other. it feels like how people describe cuddling in books and make it look in movies and namjoon didn’t know that was something that actually happened this way in real life.

“i kind of feel bad for using something so sweet as potential blackmail material, but, well …” taehyung trails off, shrugging, and jungkook lifts his head to bare his teeth at him. 

“blackmail my ass,” he says, “gimme the phone hyung, i’ll post that to twitter myself.” 

and knowing jungkook, he absolutely would, too. for all that he’s so quiet and skittish about some things still, there’s other things that he’s never for one second been shy about, and namjoon loves that about him. he loves that he gets to be one of those things, for jungkook. 

“love you, guk-ah,” namjoon mumbles, his face still mashed into the front of jungkook’s as usual absolutely pristine white tee. “i love you so much. love you in all the ways.” 

“me too, hyung. i love you in more ways than i understand yet,” jungkook says, and he’s pushing his fingers gently through the hair at the back of namjoon’s head like he’s something - someone - that jungkook is nervous to touch, and they’re both sniffling and namjoon would give jungkook his last slice of pizza every single day of the week. 

“who the fuck thought it was a good idea to leave these two specifically unsupervised?” jimin asks, coming to join taehyung at the end of the bed, and seokjin materializes immediately behind them, an alarmed look already on his face. 

“don’t tell me one of them rolled off the bed, i knew we should have gotten rails for jungkook’s bed, i told namjoon - oh. they’re just cuddling?” 

jimin and taehyung snort in unison. 

“they’re professing their undying love for one another,” jimin says. 

“the cuddling is just window dressing,” taehyung adds and seokjin doesn’t say anything, just gently pushes them apart so he can step up next to the side of the bed.

he holds out his hands and namjoon and jungkook both reach for him at the same time, each grabbing one of his hands. 

“c’mon,” he says, tugging them both up off the bed. it takes namjoon a second to get orientated when he’s on his feet, and he doesn’t really feel steady until seokjin and jungkook have him held between them, one of his arms thrown up over both of their shoulders. “are you okay? do you need to throw up? pee? anything?” 

namjoon pauses to consider this. 

“pee,” he decides, because he feels considerably off kilter still, but he doesn’t find any nausea in him when he casts around for it. “i just need to pee. like … a lot, actually.” 

“okay,” seokjin says, and then they set off, both of them slowly and carefully guiding namjoon out of the room and down the short corridor to the bathroom. when they get there, they both pause. “are you … are you good to go by yourself, or -” 

“do you need help, hyung?” jungkook pipes up and then there’s a strange sound. almost like someone getting their butt slapped. jungkook wriggles a little, at namjoon’s side, and taehyung and jimin are both cackling from the top of the corridor. hoseok and yoongi are nowhere to be seen, still. man, namjoon misses them. 

“we’re going to have a conversation about this that absolutely isn’t going to include namjoon, as soon as he’s sober and not giving me enough material for four different kinds of cardiac events, jeon jungkook.” 

“sorry hyung,” jungkook mumbles, and he sounds sad, so namjoon swings around to press a kiss to his cheek. only, his balance is off and his spatial awareness isn’t great at the best of times, so he maybe ends up kissing jungkook half on his actual mouth? which. wow. that’s a whole new level of ‘off balance.’ namjoon feels kind of like he’s in one of those zero gravity simulators, when he looks at jungkook’s face - shocked and blushing prettily - from this close. he looks down at his own feet then, because it doesn’t feel like they’re touching the floor anymore. 

“oh jesus. fuck. okay. namjoon, you need to pee,” seokjin reminds him, because he’s the best hyung. he’s namjoon’s favorite hyung, for sure. except for yoongi. god, namjoon misses yoongi. he hasn’t seen him in forever. “in you go, good boy,” seokjin prompts him, propelling him gently through the bathroom door and the way namjoon’s knees buckle has absolutely nothing to do with anything he’s drunk tonight. he wobbles but catches himself before he falls, and seokjin breathes a sigh of relief. he’s got his back to namjoon, which is so sweet of him, so considerate. he’s also standing in the doorway with his arms crossed like he’s guarding the bathroom, which is kind of weird. it’s not like namjoon is going to try and make a break for it. where would he want to go, when they’re all here? 

“i miss yoongi. where’s yoongi-hyung?” namjoon calls, loud enough that it echoes off the tiles. it takes him a minute to fumble his shorts down and figure out how underwear works. he pees for like, a really long time, so he’s got ample opportunity to fret while he does. “where did you put yoongi-hyung and hoseokie, hyung? did you hide them from me?” why would seokjin do that. that’s so mean. 

“they haven’t gone anywhere,” seokjin assures him and namjoon wants to believe him, because he’s being especially soothing about how he says it, but namjoon can’t _see_ them and he doesn’t like that at all. he likes warm water, though. once he’s figured out the complicated layering system that is his underwear situation, he spends a while washing his hands in the sink. warm, soapy water is the best. 

“they’re getting you pizza,” seokjin says, and namjoon’s so excited about the prospect of pizza that he forgets who or what they’re talking about, for a second. but only for a second, because yoongi hyung. yoongi hyung and hobi, lovely hobi. namjoon wishes they were here. they should take a bath together. all of them. that would be so cool. 

“they’re also hiding from you while you’re saying stuff like this,” jungkook adds from the hallway. “cowards.” 

“just because you were like … born ready to throw yourself on top of this particular landmine doesn’t make them cowards for running from it, you little brat,” seokjin says, and namjoon can hear the frown in his voice. he dries his hands on his shorts and then on his tshirt and then he wraps himself around seokjin from behind because he hates seeing him frown, he only ever wants his biggest hyung to be happy. “theirs is the rational fucking response here, jungkook,” seokjin says. through gritted teeth. 

it’s while namjoon is trying to stick his fingers in seokjin’s mouth that the door chime rings out. 

“food’s here,” seokjin says, shuffling up the corridor adorably and leaving namjoon alone with jungkook. again. 

jungkook looks at him and namjoon looks right back and then jungkook’s eyes cut away to one side and his mouth falls open, like, really widely. namjoon stares, and then his brain catches up with his eyes and he gasps, and he’s on the verge of touching jungkook’s tongue, he’s a man on the very edge; a man about to step off a fucking ledge, but then there’s a hand hooked around his neck and dragging him up the corridor, taehyung towing him away like he’s little bo peep and namjoon is one of his lost sheep. 

“you’d look so, so pretty in lace skirts,” namjoon says, and taehyung spins around to look at him, his whole face lit up by his delight, but before he can say anything, hoseok is pulling him away. into a headlock. 

“no more unsupervised maknae line shenanigans,” he says, bending to use the hold he has on taehyung to keep him still so he can press kisses all over his face. namjoon doesn’t know why he’s bothering, because taehyung turns his face up into it like a sunflower lifting its head towards the sun. “this is going to be so fun to watch you all debrief from, tomorrow.” 

“oh, it was someone else who offered to tip the restaurant exorbitantly if they got the pizza here quicker, was it? you’re completely composed right now, are you, hoseok-ssi? this is just a regular tuesday night for you, huh?” 

yoongi says this, setting a stack of takeout boxes onto the kitchen counter so he can take the bag of drinks off his wrist, and namjoon is more excited about seeing yoongi than he is about the pizza, although he’s still really, really fucking excited about the pizza. 

when he reaches out with grabby hands, yoongi laughs at him a little and hands him the top box in the stack. when namjoon passes this off to jimin and reaches for yoongi instead, yoongi doesn’t laugh. 

“i missed you so much, hyung,” namjoon says, and yoongi visibly pales. “nooo you can’t be this pale, hyung. you’re already like a hot little ghost, you need more color in these cheeks.” namjoon pinches gently at yoongi’s cheeks. or he tries to, anyway, but his hands aren’t really cooperating right now, so he ends up kind of mashing at them, instead. but still gently, so that’s okay. 

“what about his other cheeks though,” jimin prompts, passing by to gather the rest of the boxes and then spiriting them away to - oh.

a nest. they’ve built him a nest. there’s a sprawling pile of blankets and pillows on the center of the living room floor, the table pushed off to one side to make room for it. someone has even strung up fairy lights, multiple sets of them criss-crossed along the sofa and hung in loops between the shelves and the tv to softly light the nest. the nest that they built, just for namjoon. seokjin and jungkook are already cuddled up together in one corner of it, seokjin sitting up cross-legged and jungkook lying mostly in his lap. taehyung is on the other side of seokjin, lying down with hoseok spooned up in front of him and reaching out to help jimin with the boxes when he approaches. the space they’ve left is conspicuous and it’s right in the middle of all of them, right in the very center and distinctly him-shaped. 

yeah, namjoon is definitely crying again now. 

“c’mon, joon-ah,” yoongi says, reaching up to take both of namjoon’s wrists in his hands and then tugging him across the room. “the food will get cold. don’t ever listen to anything jimin says, okay? he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. he’s projecting or something.” 

“hell yeah i am,” jimin agrees, passing them by again to grab the cans of soda and a stack of napkins. “i for sure wish it was me pinching your cheeks, hyung. just, you know, not those ones. like i said.” 

“shameless,” yoongi says, scolding even while he’s blushing and focusing very hard on pulling slices of pizza apart. 

as soon as jimin has finished passing out the drinks he throws himself belly up on the floor in front of yoongi’s crossed knees. 

“absolutely, hyung. namjoon hyung is the one who needed to get wasted to confess to us. i’ll tell you all how much i love you whenever you want. any time, any place, chagiya.” 

he’s still not wearing a shirt, and he winks at yoongi and at least eight of them are blushing, now. namjoon is also, maybe, seeing double. 

“how do you feel, 'joon-ah?” hoseok asks, putting a slice of pizza in namjoon’s hand and then pushing his hair back out of his face, peering at him up close and so, so lovely. 

“full of feelings,” namjoon manages to mumble around his mouthful, most of the slice crammed in there already. “also i’m seeing like … more of you than there really are. ‘s pretty cool. this pizza is delicious. i love you, did i tell you that?” 

someone huffs, and namjoon would try to figure out who, but jimin is sitting up inside yoongi’s spread legs now, and he’s tugging at the back of namjoon’s shirt until he scoots back into the vee of his legs, the three of them stacked up like russian nesting dolls that go out instead of in. yoongi is the smallest of them and namjoon is by far the biggest, but he’s completely comfortable lying down a little, resting back against jimin where he sits against yoongi’s chest and letting them take his weight. neither of them protests or moves. 

“yeah, you mentioned,” hoseok says, and namjoon grins at him, probably dopily. he feels all the kinds of full now and it’s awesome. 

they’re mostly quiet while they eat, aside from taehyung moaning some, which makes namjoon sit up like a vampire rising from his coffin at the call of the moon, but taehyung just laughs at him and pushes him gently back down. and then he feeds namjoon more pizza by hand, so namjoon has no real need or desire to say or do anything else, honestly. 

“hey,” seokjin says, hesitant enough that everyone looks at him. well, everyone except jungkook and taehyung, because they’re sorting the pizza boxes and food debris into the recycling bin and food waste bag. everyone else looks at seokjin, though. namjoon could look at him for like, a really long time. he’s probably pretty even under a microscope. he’s probably even prettier like that; all the tiny little bits and pieces of him magnified and no doubt magnificent. 

“um. no one has ever told me that i have hot thrombocytes before,” seokjin says, sounding lost. “that sounds - is that something dirty? because it sounds kind of dirty. but um -” he looks at yoongi, who only shrugs at him and lifts his hands as if to say ‘i’ve got nothing.’ which is dumb, because he’s got literally everything. he’s the man of namjoon’s dreams. or one of them, at least. “thanks? but about what you said earlier.” 

jungkook and taehyung are back now, taehyung rolling right over hoseok and then back again to sprawl out on top of him. jungkook is sitting next to namjoon with a packet of wet wipes in his lap, carefully and methodically cleaning namjoon’s hands off. he’s putting way too much time, effort and focus into the task, but that could be said for most things jungkook does. namjoon is honored to himself be something that jungkook does. he’d like to think of it as being the first step on his road to becoming some _one_ that jungkook does. 

“no, joon. not the part about you being in love with jungkook. that was pretty … self explanatory. also unnecessarily heartfelt, honestly. bordering on cruel, really,” what seokjin means by that or why he’s holding jungkook’s hand, namjoon can’t even being to hazard a guess. he tries to lift his own hands in protest, but when he does he finds that jungkook has finished scrubbing them clean and one is gripping jimin’s hand, while the other is … getting pretty well acquainted with the inside of yoongi’s thigh, actually. both jimin and yoongi are watching that hand with interest. jungkook is trying to wiggle his free hand in between namjoon and jimin’s joined hands. 

seokjin thumbs at namjoon’s chin to get his attention back, and namjoon is thankful for that, because he was about to get lost in a no doubt fruitless attempt to hold hands with six people at once, somehow. 

“i meant the other thing,” seokjin says gently, watching namjoon closely. “about why you felt like you needed to get drunk tonight.” 

“ohhhhhh,” namjoon says, trying to think back that far. it’s difficult. he wriggles around trying to get comfortable, but finds that he can’t, not with jimin and yoongi still behind and underneath him like this. so namjoon does the sensible and reasonable thing and rolls over until he’s on his back in the middle of the nest, and then he tugs at everyone he can reach and pulls them to drape themselves over and around him like blankets. 

like this, with all of them overlapping and every single one of them touching namjoon somewhere, somehow; all of them within his reach, namjoon closes his eyes and tries to think. it’s easier, with them here like this, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. 

“i was trying to write lyrics that wouldn’t embarrass you and bring shame upon my family,” he says. 

he pauses to wonder if any of them would even be able to understand what it’s like, to struggle with that. everything yoongi writes is cool and even if it wasn’t, he wouldn’t give a fuck no matter what anyone said about it. maybe it’s that attitude that makes everything he says cool, actually. maybe it’s not what he says, but the way he says it. namjoon tilts his head back so he can look up into yoongi’s face where he’s curled up in a ball up near namjoon’s shoulder. he’s so handsome, barefaced and with his fluffy headband still on, the lines of piercings in his earlobes commemorative decorations to celebrate all the times he’s been low, found himself sinking, and punched a hole in himself to gather the pages of him back together in the ringbinder that this has become for him; for all of them. he’s so smart, so intuitive and observant and capable and he’s already looking at namjoon when namjoon turns to him, which makes namjoon blush for some reason. his cheeks feel like they’re on fire but yoongi only looks right back at him, patient and unblinking. pretty often, when yoongi is the center of attention for some reason or another, he’ll do whatever he can to escape the spotlight, but he looks at namjoon now like he’d be content to be observed by him for as long as namjoon wanted. or - needed, really. because namjoon finds himself needing to look to yoongi, and that’s not a new thing. 

“i shouldn’t be the leader,” namjoon says, a moment of clarity inspiring a new level of honesty in him. this is something he’s been struggling to think about, let alone speak out loud. but it’s rising in him now, fast and panicked. his hands start to shake, his shoulders trembling until jimin and taehyung each take one of his arms and wrap themselves completely around them, soothing the static that’s flooding his veins with their warm and familiar weight. hoseok flops down over jimin’s side until he can rest his head on namjoon’s stomach, and namjoon feels tethered by them, feels like a balloon that was about to float off into the ether all alone, until they reached out to take hold of it, to keep it here. with them. not alone. not anymore. 

“i’d do anything i could, for all of you. i’ll do whatever you need me to, but i don’t know if i know how to be good enough for you. i don’t know how to -” 

“namjoon-ah,” seokjin interrupts, and namjoon probably would’ve kept right on talking if seokjin had only spoken, but he also reaches out to gently tap at the space between namjoon’s eyebrows, which is something he does every time namjoon is thinking too much or spiralling into angst and seokjin takes it upon himself to pull namjoon back to safety, back onto dry land. 

seokjin is like a moon shining high and huge in the sky, and all of the oceans are inside of namjoon, swelling out towards him, making to invade the stratosphere if that’s what it takes to reach him. seokjin binds them. he tends to them all so selflessly, so lovingly, and namjoon has never known what it’s like to be loved that way before. seokjin was a very particular kind of beginning for namjoon, he realizes as he blinks up at him, realizing now that he’s lying kind of perpendicular to him, his head and shoulders pillowed on seokjin’s thigh. jungkook is lying between seokjin’s thighs and namjoon wants to turn over and crawl to get to him, but he doesn’t want to move away from any of the rest of them. whatever sound of frustration he makes must make all of this clear, because jungkook rolls over until he’s koala hugging seokjin’s leg just like jimin and taehyung are doing to namjoon’s arms, and that brings him close enough to lean in and press the tip of his nose to the round of namjoon’s shoulder. 

namjoon sighs, content, and tips his head further back against seokjin’s thigh, blinking up at him to let him know that he received seokjin’s tactile coded message to slow his roll. 

“you _are_ our leader,” seokjin says and when namjoon sighs again it’s different this time. he almost finds it in himself to feel frustrated, even weighed down by all of them like this and more comfortable and happy than he can ever remember feeling before, because he knows that, he knows that he is the leader, but - 

“no, you’re not getting it, sweetheart,” seokjin interrupts him again, and namjoon even likes how he does that. leader or not, seokjin is his hyung and namjoon loves that he is. “i’m not saying you’re the leader because you are. i mean that you’re the only person who ever could be our leader. you’re not the leader because we needed one; you’re our leader because we need you. because of how we need you.” 

someone shivers, and it might be namjoon, but it might not. he honestly can’t tell at this point. hoseok’s breath is warm against the sliver of bare skin between namjoon’s shirt and shorts. yoongi’s hands are in namjoon’s hair and taehyung’s too. seokjin’s palm looks huge splayed out around the side of jungkook’s neck and when jungkook lifts his leg to wind it up over the tangle of jimin and hoseok at namjoon’s side, they both reach to help him make it work comfortably. namjoon honestly can’t tell where he ends and they begin. but maybe, he thinks, that’s because he doesn’t end where they begin. he begins and ends wherever they are, however that is. 

“i just want to be a good thing for you all,” he says, closing his eyes when the ceiling starts to swim before him in a wild ripple of waves. “i know i’m hard work, i know we all are, but i want to be worth it for you the way you all are for me.” 

“hyung,” jimin whispers close to namjoon’s ear, and namjoon bites down on his own tongue to keep from making a sound. the hair standing up on his arms and at the back of his neck is embarrassing enough. “hyung, you don’t just make this ‘worth it’ for us. you _are_ this for us.” 

“you weren’t just the start of this whole thing, even though you were that too,” yoongi says softly, quiet because he’s curled so close. 

“you’re why we’re still here, you’re why all of us have made it this far,” taehyung smudges the words into the bare skin above namjoon’s elbow, his lips pressed close enough to touch. 

“you’re the reason i’m here at all,” jungkook says, and it’s not the first time he’s said it, but it hits namjoon harder tonight, digs in up inside his rib cage and closes a hold around his heart. 

some days, it feels to namjoon like he’s hollowing himself out for them. like he’s pulling himself apart for this; no less than the rest of them are, but in a different way. in ways that feel finite to him, when he’s at his most scared. he doesn’t always know that there’s enough of him to sustain them, but that’s not his job, that’s not what this is about or how it goes, he realizes now. 

“even on the worst days, you keep us going. even when it feels like we’re going around in circles, you’re our true north. we don’t need to know where we’re going or how we’re getting there, when we have you as our guide.” this is unusually sombre, coming from hoseok. it’s solemn, which he rarely is, and namjoon has to press his open mouth to the wadded folds of jungkook’s hoodie to silence his sob. 

it doesn’t matter how they found themselves here, only that they did. it doesn’t matter who namjoon had been before them or how much of himself he’d had stored up, because nothing about him is finite anymore. this isn’t a process of reduction, it’s the opposite. he lies still, at peace inside the fold of them, and realizes that every moment they spend like this; every second he gets to spend loving them, is something like another birth; even the bad days and the painful moments coming together in big bangs that explode in their skies like stars, like fireworks. he’ll always have enough for them. he’s only ever more because of them. 

“we’re gonna make it,” namjoon decides then and there; swears it like an oath because it’s the first thing he’s found himself completely certain of in a very, very long time. “it’s not going to happen overnight, but we’ll make this work, the seven of us. we’re gonna do it bigger and better than it’s ever been done before.” 

if they’re prepared to follow him, there’s nowhere he can’t lead them. together, there’s nowhere they can’t go. 

“i knew that the first time you decided to call me out to that coffee shop to interview me for a job i’d already gotten, joon-ah,” seokjin says, smiling now, and his eyes are closed and he - for once - looks like he doesn’t have a care in the world. 

because almost every part of this is stressful, and it’s probably always going to be that way. but if this can be what fuels them - if this feeling right here and right now can be what motivates them - neither stress nor anything else can derail them. it’s not what they have to do that defines this, not anymore. it’s why. it’s for who and with whom. 

“the second thing i’m gonna buy when we make it is gonna be a whole floor of those new apartments on the hill in hannam,” namjoon declares, sighing when seokjin reaches to push his hand through namjoon’s hair, scratching his nails gently down the back of namjoon’s neck. “once i’ve gotten yoongi hyung his kumamon mascot, i’m buying us a place to live together forever.” 

“we love you too, namjoon-ah,” yoongi says and namjoon can hear the smile in his voice. 

the blank canvas behind namjoon’s eyelids - the endless and welcoming map of their potential - burns bright for a moment, and then subsides, set, to see namjoon off to sleep.

“and not just in the warm and fuzzy way,” taehyung says, voice slurred in half sleep already, “but also in the sweaty, dirty, gymnastic -” 

“go the fuck to sleep, taehyung,” jimin says, and jungkook laughs at namjoon’s shoulder. 

hoseok’s are the first breaths to trail off into dreams, and namjoon follows him soon after, warm and snug and without worry, for once, because they’re all where he can see and feel them; safe in his nest. 

namjoon sleeps easily, finally soothed. in their arms and in their love.

•·················ıllııllıllııllıllı·················•

namjoon wakes up feeling better than he has in weeks, in months.

he slept later than he was supposed to, and he feels great for it. 

they forgot to close the curtains last night, so the sun is high and bright in the sky; blinding when namjoon opens his eyes. he can’t move, he finds, because they’ve all curled in in their sleep, and he’s caught tight in the tangle of them all, held fast in the very middle, right at the center of the pile of them. 

propping himself up just enough to better take in the splay of them without disturbing anyone, namjoon takes stock of the scene before him. 

hoseok’s mouth is open against namjoon’s bare thigh and jimin’s foot is pushed down into the back of hoseok’s shorts. hoseok is hugging the leg that jungkook still has slung over both him and jimin, and seokjin is sleeping on jungkook’s arm, pushed up inside seokjin’s shirt. jimin’s bare chest is like a radiator against namjoon’s arm and it can’t be comfortable, how he’s twisted in his sleep to turn his face back into jungkook’s hip, but he’s smiling faintly, the expression dreamy on his peaceful face. on the other side of namjoon, taehyung is sleeping half up over namjoon, his arm stretched out so he can reach across him to touch jimin. yoongi is curled up still, but tucked close to taehyung’s back now, his face hidden down between the dip of taehyung’s shoulders. his arm is slung around taehyung’s waist, his hand slotted between taehyung’s ribs and namjoon’s hip like a bookmark between pages. seokjin is starfished out across most of the nest, his body a pillow for yoongi (using his shoulder), namjoon (resting his head on seokjin’s stomach) and jungkook (sleeping soundly on seokjin’s thigh.) 

namjoon has the beginnings of a headache, he’s so thirsty it’s almost painful and he really, really needs to pee after the five glasses of water hoseok had poured into his mouth before he’d let namjoon sleep last night. and so namjoon does the sensible, reasonable thing; he lies back down where he is and closes his eyes to enjoy this for a little while longer. 

he’s woken again by the general shuffle of all of them waking up, a chain reaction that has no clear beginning but ends with namjoon, the last of them to sit up. 

seokjin and yoongi are sitting together to one side, both of them cross-legged and straight faced. taehyung is lying across jimin’s lap and jungkook is on his knees next to them. hoseok is at namjoon’s side, the only other person still lying down, but propped up on one elbow so he can talk to seokjin and yoongi across namjoon’s chest. 

“so,” jungkook says after a heavy and sustained beat of silence, and the look on his face is so openly hopeful, so gleefully, wholly ecstatic and excited that even namjoon has to put his face in his hands and laugh.

•·················ıllııllıllııllıllı·················•

namjoon types his lyrics into the notes app on his phone during breakfast.

he’s half listening to what seokjin and taehyung are arguing amicably about - crop tops, and why taehyung thinks they need to get seokjin into one like immediately - and switching his focus out between opening his mouth for the spoonfuls of food that jimin brings to him ( accompanied by the airplane noise, his grin solid enough that namjoon knows he could do this all day and not get bored ) and pushing plates closer to jungkook, gesturing for him to eat up, eat more. 

yoongi and hoseok are sitting on either side of namjoon, both of them peering at his phone screen when he tilts it in their direction or just when they want to lean in over his shoulder to check up on his progress so far. 

namjoon forgets all about what’s expected of him, or what might be thought of him, and he focuses entirely on what he’s capable of and what he’s determined to do, instead. the words come quickly, flow fast and easy and he’s scrambling to keep up, but he does, because he can. because there’s nothing he can’t do with these six people at his side; behind him and pushing him forward, leading him and motivating him, making every single second of this worth it for him. important, for all of them. 

metaphors come to him before he can fully stretch them out and clean them up, but he puts them in still rough, knowing it’ll be nothing to polish them properly later. yoongi will help, or maybe he won’t and either way they’ll be more than good enough, because namjoon means them now, really and truly _means_ what he’s writing and intends to say it as many times as he has to until he’s heard. until the truth of them and who they are and what they’re capable of is believed, because they’ve proved it. 

the lyrics read aggressively, but they already sound just plain certain in namjoon’s head. this isn’t about frustration, not anymore. not after last night. it’s about confidence now, and the kind that namjoon won’t doubt anymore because falling asleep last night and looking around the table now, namjoon’s perspective has shifted in new realization, in respect of something that he’s never going to forget, now that he knows it. 

this isn’t about him. 

it’s about what he can do with them and what they’ve set out to do together. 

and namjoon has no doubt about that. namjoon’s certain about that and set in it already the way taehyung is in his own body, the way seokjin is about stepping up to take care of them, the way yoongi is when he sits down in front of a mixing desk, the way jimin and hoseok are when they lead the way down into the practice room, the way jungkook is about everything and anything if his hyungs are by his side. 

“maybe we should keep the nest,” hoseok muses as they clean up together after their meal, and namjoon flicks soapy water at him, shaking his head. 

“it’s not very practical for the day to day purpose of this space,” yoongi observes, voicing namjoon’s thoughts for him, and then he looks to seokjin before he adds - “but at least we know how to set it out, now. in case we need to again. for some reason.” 

jimin is wrapped around namjoon in a back hug while namjoon dries the dishes, so he feels it when jimin lifts his head from namjoon’s shoulder to look across the kitchen at yoongi, gasping theatrically. 

“oh my! what are you suggesting, hyung? what possible need could the seven of us have for a huge pile of cushioning, hopefully sound-proofing blankets?” 

jimin ducks down under namjoon’s arm and tries to hide between him and counter when yoongi comes for him, but he doesn’t get to him because hoseok and namjoon stand side by side to shield him. 

it’s only when taehyung wades into the fray that jimin deigns to re-appear, his head popping up between namjoon and hoseok’s when taehyung loudly complains; 

“yah, we’re still in our honeymoon phase and you’re already ready to leave me? you’re bored of me after just four months?” 

jimin fights his way past hoseok, namjoon and yoongi to get to taehyung, then. 

“the absolute audacity,” he says, poking taehyung hard in the chest. “which one of us was it that asked me to role play as jin hyung for them, huh? because that was not my idea, kim taehyung. and i know for a fact you kissed jungkook before you kissed me, so don’t you dare try to put this on me.” 

taehyung tries to wrap his arms around jimin, who tries half-heartedly to push him away. 

“that was just practice! he wanted to make sure he was a good kisser for -” 

jungkook is down off the counter he’d been sitting on quicker than namjoon can even process, and he slaps a hand across taehyung’s mouth so hard that namjoon winces. 

“what a fucking mess,” seokjin observes mildly from the table. he’s got his glasses on and he’s produced an actual newspaper from somewhere and namjoon can’t believe he chose these people to be in love with. he really might be a genius after all. “why do you need jimin to pretend to be me when i’m right here? that’s unnecessarily weird, taehyung-ah. even for you.” 

taehyung’s eyes go very large above jungkook’s hand when seokjin says this, but before he can actually respond, jimin is reaching in between them to flick jungkook lightly on the forehead. 

“your rapmon hyung confessed to you like not even twelve hours ago, why are you still pretending to be shy? you already know the rest of us are whipped for you, you exploit it all the time.” 

“oh!” taehyung says, freed at last now that jungkook is using both his hands to try and hide behind jimin, who is both smaller than him and trying very seriously to kiss him all over his face. “can we all be shameless about this now?” he sidles across the kitchen towards namjoon, who shrinks down between hoseok and yoongi, purely instinctively. “because i was reading your lyrics in the reflection of jin hyung’s glasses, hyung, and i think they’re great. i’ve been practicing, and i really think i could bring something to this cypher, hyung. i could show you? and maybe take my shirt off? and you could also take your shirt off? and hobi hyung and yoongi hyung could -” 

namjoon has his face hidden in against hoseok’s neck and he’s afraid to look up, even to check what’s going on, when taehyung goes silent. someone’s hand is creeping under the hem of namjoon’s tshirt but he knows by feel that it’s too small to be taehyung’s. namjoon shivers so hard it zips through him like a prelude to full on vibrating. 

“and who exactly is this practice for?” jimin asks, and his voice is faint and faraway sounding, dreamy enough in tone that namjoon peeks out of his hiding spot. just in time to see taehyung and yoongi break apart, yoongi’s eyes staying closed for long enough that he misses the way taehyung grins at him. namjoon doesn’t, though, and oh, it’s hoseok’s hand that’s up inside his shirt, resting warm and firm at his waist now, and namjoon wonders if it would be rude of him to steal taehyung and yoongi’s thunder by kissing hoseok right now. like maybe he needs to wait five minutes? how long, exactly, says ‘i’m happy for you, but look how happy i am for me, too’? 

“it uh -” yoongi clears his throat, and it feels like everyone on earth holds their breath. “it could be for you, if you wanted,” he says, looking at jimin from under his eyelashes, and namjoon, hoseok, taehyung _and_ jimin gasp. the fact that it’s only the four of them that do makes namjoon suspicious, but when he looks around yoongi he sees that seokjin has pulled jungkook down to sit in his lap, and they’re both blushing and looking everywhere but at each other, so that’s enough of an explanation for namjoon. he’s entirely satisfied with that situation, and when he turns to settle back into his place between yoongi and hoseok, he’s smiling fondly. until yoongi rocks up on his toes and presses his mouth to namjoon’s, and then hoseok’s, too; a one two love tap of quick, soft kisses. 

“oh so that’s how it’s gonna be, hyung? you flirt with me and then kiss other boys right in front of me?” jimin, for what he says, sounds nothing but delighted by all of this. 

“well,” yoongi reasons, stepping out from in between taehyung and namjoon to cross the kitchen and back jimin up against the door of the fridge. “there’s a lot of us. it might take me a while to figure out the numbers. maybe i need some kind of spread sheet.” 

why that makes jimin tug yoongi to him with a fist locked in the front of yoongi’s shirt, namjoon doesn’t know, but he must have really seriously strong feelings about spread sheets, because the way they’re kissing isn’t at all like the way yoongi had kissed hoseok. and namjoon. holy fuck, yoongi kissed him. 

“are you happy now?” seokjin asks, looking at namjoon over the top of jungkook’s head, which is dipped low enough for jungkook to be able to push his nose down under the collar of seokjin’s shirt. “is this the madness you hoped to incite when you got drunk and tumbled home to throw us all into pure chaos?” 

it’s all kinds of ridiculous, namjoon thinks, that this really is all his fault, but he’s somehow the only one of them that looks at all shocked or taken aback by this. 

“i … i mean,” namjoon tries to think, tries to speak, but neither of those things is easy to do with hoseok’s hand in his back pocket and taehyung looking at him in a way that could only be described as ‘predatory.’ “i know i drunkenly confessed to you all - and i’m sorry about that, by the way. i hope you all know i don’t need to be drunk to tell you that i love you. but i guess i’d missed the part where you were all in love with each other?” 

“oh, did you think we were all just in love with you, hyung?” jungkook asks, voice muffled, and how is the back of his neck so attractive? how is literally everything about him beautiful? as blisteringly hot as he is, namjoon can’t totally distract himself from the fact that jungkook just alluded to being in love with him, which still hits him like a train because sure he’d said so last night, but that was last night. this is today. in the harsh light of day. while jungkook is in seokjin’s lap. and still in love with namjoon, apparently. 

“um. that’s probably the part that’s throwing me the most?” 

“so help me god, kim namjoon, don’t make me tackle you back down into the nest for another pep talk, because i’ll do it, you know i will.” probably this would sound more threatening if seokjin didn’t have his head tipped back to the ceiling, his eyes closed and his face blissed out because of whatever jungkook is doing with his mouth under seokjin’s shirt now. and also if getting tackled literally anywhere, anytime by seokjin wasn’t one of namjoon’s oldest, fiercest dreams. 

“no that’s okay, hyung,” namjoon says, because it seems like he’s busy and namjoon can be selfless. he can absolutely rise to the challenge of self sacrifice in this instance. when it means watching the way jungkook’s eyelashes flutter closed when he surfaces from seokjin’s shirt just to press his mouth to the base of seokjin’s throat, to his adam’s apple, to his chin, and then to his lovely, gorgeous mouth. it can’t be right, how pretty the two of them look together, twined around one another in the late morning light. “i believe you. i just wasn’t prepared for this? i hadn’t even planned on confessing. it just happened that when i got drunk enough to forget about all the superficial stuff that doesn’t actually matter … this was all that i was left with.” 

“this, hyung?” taehyung asks. he’s got his arm around hoseok’s waist and his head leaning in against hoseok’s shoulder and hoseok, hilariously, looks like a balloon that’s one breath away from exploding. 

“this,” namjoon says, lifting both of his hands to gesture around the kitchen, “you. all of you.” 

“that’s so fucking romantic, hyung,” jimin says, not even looking at namjoon because he’s spun yoongi around and is trying to lift him up onto the countertop now. ‘trying’ only because yoongi keeps swatting at his hands and squirming out of his grasp, not because he’s not able to. jimin is - as namjoon had drunkenly declared last night and noticed like, always - super fucking ripped. namjoon’s pretty sure he could squat press yoongi. if yoongi would only comply. in other words, it’s never going to happen, but a boy can still dream. 

“he’s always had a way with words, this one,” hoseok says, grinning at namjoon so brightly that namjoon wants to lift his hand up over his eyes to shield himself from the sight of him. he’s so, so pretty. namjoon reaches for him, needing to hold a hand about it. 

“hey, rock, paper, scissors for who gets to kiss him first?” seokjin says, and namjoon only realizes that he’s talking about him when jungkook immediately tries to scramble out of seokjin’s lap to get across the kitchen to him. seokjin was obviously prepared for this, though, because he grabs jungkook’s outstretched arms and folds them in against his own chest, and then he bounces jungkook in his lap. 

it’s a successful mission, in that it stops jungkook in his tracks. he goes still in seokjin’s arms, face suspiciously blank. for all of half a second. and then he’s wrestling his arms free and pinning seokjin’s shoulders down so he can lean in and bite at the side of his throat. 

“you’re too slow, as usual, ahjussi,” jungkook says lowly, easily, and namjoon’s pretty sure seokjin’s shocked, slack face is a mirror image of his own. “rapmon hyung kissed me last night; kissed me before he kissed any of you losers.” 

“that doesn’t count,” taehyung protests, pouting, “he was drunk. we’re not counting that.” 

“okay, sure,” jungkook agrees, climbing neatly off of seokjin and successfully crossing the kitchen now that seokjin has been both silenced and factory reset, it looks like. he doesn’t go to namjoon, though. he stops in front of hoseok, instead, still looking at taehyung. “if you’re that pressed about me being hyung’s favorite, i’ll let you pretend.” 

it’s downright cruel, when jungkook follows this gauntlet up by ignoring both namjoon and taehyung to soundly kiss hoseok where he stands between them. 

“wow, that’s - that’s very … that’s like, incredibly inspiring to witness,” yoongi says, sounding lost, and jimin takes his pause as opportunity to get him lifted up onto the counter top at last, crowding in between his spread knees. “i kind of want to do a rap battle right now. and take on literally anyone.” yoongi’s hands go to jimin’s bare shoulders, but his eyes stay trained on jungkook and hoseok, hoseok slumped back against the sink and jungkook holding him up with both arms banded tight around his waist. jungkook’s dimple appears when he smiles, and then he breathes in hard through his nose and opens his mouth against hoseok’s and hoseok moans lowly, helplessly. “fuck, maybe i want to take on everyone,” yoongi decides. 

“i always knew we were kind of terrifying,” taehyung observes mildly, folding his arms across his chest and nodding to himself. “but now i almost actually feel sorry for … the whole world, maybe? is that too cocky of me, hyung? am i getting ahead of myself?” 

“not from what i’ve seen,” seokjin says, barely - _barely_ \- disguising it beneath a fake cough, and namjoon chooses to ignore that, for everyone’s sake but mostly his own. 

“nope,” he says, in response to taehyung’s question, and when he lifts his arm, taehyung slides in underneath it easily, automatically. “that’s purely reasonable, if you ask me.”

•·················ıllııllıllııllıllı·················•

yoongi and hoseok’s lyrics aren’t due for another few days, but both of them come to find namjoon with their notebooks in hand before the day is out.

the nest is broken down and cleaned away; blankets folded and put back on their respective beds but the fairy lights left strung up in the living room. when they have down time now, the living room is where you find them. even when they’re napping after practice or before meals, they curl up on the couch, on the floor, and a still or sleeping body becomes an open invitation, puppy piles springing up everywhere and anywhere. 

namjoon gets given another embarrassing haircut, but yoongi says he likes it so namjoon makes it work. 

they’re ridiculed across several forums for the styling of their next music video, but they have to record three different versions of their own reaction to it because all of them have so much to say and on several occasions taehyung decides to lay out his love a little too explicitly. 

the next time namjoon sits down to write, he doesn’t sit down at all. 

he grabs his pillow from his bed and flops down onto the living room floor and not even ten minutes after he does, jungkook wanders in and wordlessly falls to lie down on top of him. 

namjoon writes with his phone held up in the air over jungkook’s shoulder, and when his hand cramps up jimin sits cross-legged next to them and writes down what namjoon dictates to him, adding taehyung’s suggestions on the back of the page “because nobody needs to read this. we’re still rookies, we can’t have a track banned from public broadcast at this point in our careers, not yet.” 

seokjin comes to help them all up off the floor when yoongi sends him to gather them for dinner, and when namjoon calls hoseok, he answers with ‘i’m coming hyung, wait for me, i’m almost there.’ 

so they sit together around the table, their crossed legs knocking their knees into one another, and talk over pots and bowls that are still steaming when hoseok catapults himself through the front door and kicks his shoes off to throw himself down into yoongi’s lap. 

hoseok is helping to choreograph their next comeback, so he’s putting in more hours at the practice studio at the moment. he’d been at work all night and all day until now and namjoon takes one look at him and sees the exhaustion written all through him. 

“c’mere,” namjoon beckons, and hoseok sits up just enough to prop himself against seokjin’s shoulder, facing namjoon now. 

namjoon spoon feeds him for a while, and then jungkook takes over when namjoon almost scalds the both of them with hot soup. 

taehyung cleans up the spill and yoongi stays to help namjoon wash and dry the dishes even though it’s not his turn to. 

they don’t need the nest again that night, not yet, but hoseok gets put to bed early and is sent there with jimin for company. 

namjoon kisses them both on the forehead before he goes to bed himself, and he reads for a while with his night light on, but when he puts his book under his pillow and reaches to turn out the light, yoongi appears and does it for him. and then wordlessly climbs into bed next to him. 

as per both of their preferences, namjoon is the little spoon. 

or at least that’s how he falls asleep. 

he wakes up having gone through some kind of metamorphosis during the night, because yoongi is still spooned up behind him, but he opens his eyes to find jungkook in his arms; making namjoon still a small spoon, but not the smallest. 

both yoongi and jungkook turn over in their sleep, almost in unison, and namjoon does too, careful not to wake them but quick to go with the flow. 

now yoongi is the smallest spoon and jungkook is the biggest but namjoon is still in the middle, small but not the smallest; big but not the biggest. 

however it goes, whatever shape this or anything else takes, it works. 

seokjin wakes the whole room up practicing for the vocal track they’re working on at the moment and though hoseok throws a pillow at him, he’s smiling when he sits up. 

they eat together and then they go their separate ways for the day; some of them to work, some of them to lessons, some of them to school and hoseok back to sleep for a while. 

it’ll be days before they get to eat together again, and that’s okay. 

even when they’re not all present or in the same place, they’re together. 

they’re together, and that’s what makes it work.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••


End file.
